Transcription for Lectures and Podcasts: Long Files, Subtitles, Free Minutes
Data checked:
Lectures and podcast episodes are single long files, usually 30 to 120 minutes, and the output is often subtitles or show notes rather than a meeting summary. That changes what matters: the per-file length limit comes first, then whether SRT or VTT subtitles can be exported, then how much you can test for free. Meeting bots are mostly irrelevant here.
Check the per-file limit before anything else
A 90-minute lecture already breaks most free tiers: TurboScribe free stops at 30 minutes per file, Good Tape free at 30, Notta free at 3 minutes per recording. On paid plans the caps are much higher:
- TurboScribe Unlimited ($10 a month billed yearly): files up to 10 hours or 5 GB.
- Notta Pro: recordings up to 5 hours, uploads up to 1 GB audio or 10 GB video.
- Happy Scribe: Basic caps recordings at 90 minutes; Pro and Business are unlimited per recording.
- Sonix and Good Tape Pro state no per-file limit (Sonix plans differ in storage).
Every limit we verified, including 8-hour upload services, is in long audio transcription.
Subtitle exports for video and podcast players
| Tool | Paid from | Export | Languages |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sonix File transcription | $25/mo $22.92/mo billed yearly (Core) | DOCX, PDF, TXT, SRT, VTT | ENJAZH 54+ languages |
| Happy Scribe File transcription, Meeting notes | £17/mo £8.50/mo billed yearly (Basic) | TXT, SRT, PDF, DOCX, VTT, HTML | ENJAZH 150+ languages |
| Notta Meeting notes, File transcription, Live transcription | $13.49/mo $8.17/mo billed yearly (Pro) | TXT, DOCX, PDF, SRT, VTT, XLSX | ENJAZH 58 languages |
| Transkriptor File transcription, Meeting notes, API | $9.99/mo (Lite) | TXT, SRT, DOCX | ENJAZH 100+ languages |
| Temi File transcription | Not verified | DOCX, PDF, SRT, VTT | ENJAZH 1 languages |
| Maestra File transcription, Live transcription, API | Not verified | TXT, DOCX, PDF, JSON, SRT, VTT | ENJAZH 125+ languages |
| Descript File transcription | $24/mo $16/mo billed yearly (Hobbyist) | DOCX, TXT, MD, HTML, SRT, VTT | ENJAZH 25 languages |
| VEED File transcription | Not verified | TXT, VTT, SRT | ENJAZH |
Notes on this table: Notta’s exports need a paid plan; Otter.ai exports SRT only from Pro; VEED requires payment for TXT, VTT and SRT downloads; Temi transcribes English only. TurboScribe’s pages do not list export formats in our data, so confirm subtitle output before relying on it for captions. MacWhisper, Vibe and Aiko export SRT offline.
Free minutes to test with
- TurboScribe: 3 files a day, up to 30 minutes each, the most repeated free allowance for files.
- Transkriptor: a Free tier of 90 minutes (reset period not verified).
- Descript: 60 media minutes a month, uploads up to 1 GB, in 25 mostly European languages (no Japanese or Chinese transcription).
- Rev: 45 minutes a month, English only.
- Riverside: its standalone transcriber is advertised as free, but a monthly cap was not verified.
- Good Tape: 3 files a month, up to 30 minutes each.
For a full breakdown, see free transcription software.
Recording in the room
For in-person lectures, a recorder plus transcription beats a laptop microphone: the PLAUD device includes 300 minutes a month on its Starter plan and lists 112+ languages; AutoMemo is a Japanese voice-recorder service at ¥1,480 a month for 30 hours, with a free hour a month. MacWhisper records meetings from a Mac and transcribes on the machine.
For podcasters who also edit
Descript edits audio and video by editing the transcript. Riverside pairs a recording studio with its free transcriber and exports TXT and SRT. Trint and Sonix add collaborative transcript editing for teams.
Japanese or Chinese lectures narrow the list considerably; see Japanese transcription apps and Chinese transcription apps. Everything else can be filtered in the directory.